Vesuvius Puts Her Defence Before The Public

A pity the Pompeiians didn't read the signs Things had been building up for a while I suddenly reached boiling point Blew my top That's what volcanos do, We erupt. We burst out, like breaking dams We smother anything getting in the way Goodtime girls in the brothels, innkeepers Gladiators, I gave them impromptu burials Cocooned them in lava. Total immersion Like armies drowning in mud at Passchendaele In the Alley of Skeletons, some victims tried Shielding their faces with their hands, And I covered one mother Desperately clasping her child. I left not a single crannie or creature unburied: The Garden of Fugitives Orchards and harnessed horses A shackled slave Bawdy-houses, baths. The forum. Wineries, the amphitheatre The temples of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus The villa of mysteries The house of the faun The house of the tragic poet The house of the gladiators The house of the surgeon The house of the Golden Cupids The house of the lovers The house of Leda & the swan The debris I flung out was equal To 250,000 double decker buses per second Pumice stones rained like dropping boulders I gave birth to horror on a truly apocalyptic scale A pyroclastic flood, a tsunami of fire, ash, lava. The layer of magma underneath my feet spreads154 square miles When I next erupt, (and trust me, I will) The event will be massive, affecting 3 million people I shall wipe Naples entirely off the face of the map Nothing personal, you understand